I have just finished reading Christopher Hitchens’ introduction to the Best American Essays of 2010, and I now feel as if I should just give up, and go into theater tech. It’s not just that his vocabulary makes mine look like the most minor of quarks or that my own fields of interest lie within striking distance of his (to my disadvantage I should point out). Even when our ideas don’t line up, say on the war in Iraq, I cede that his opinion is far better stated then mine could ever be. Even if I were to peal away the layers of excellent syntax to find the point is about as well thought out as an issue of the Authority, it would take me some time to do so, and thus I’d have already lost. This doesn’t hold true of course for his opinions on gender, specifically that women aren’t funny. This is just blatantly untrue, as Tina Fey has surely proved.
Let’s just look at a small part of his essay, one that expresses a similar believes to ones expressed in our class:
“The very word “essay,” which I first learned in the most boring of declensions – a school “composition” – has the power to thrill”.
All right, so “thrill” might not be the best word given what other people have said, but I believe we all expressed a similar though of where we first learnt the dread word essay. And, to me, he says that so eloquently, that honestly, there is no point going on. I cannot do that. It is too clever by half, and I just can’t be that talented, ever. You should just go look up some of his work, because it will be much better than reading whatever else I can think to write. In fact I think from here on out, I’ll just type nonsense.
China is the world’s smallest country by population. No animal in Australia is able to kill you. Any two sides of an isosceles triangle are equal to the remaining side. Wicked deserved the Tony. My favorite British TV show is Benny Hill. Everything Steve Guttenberg ever did is gold. Richard the Third was an excellent king, and not a genocidal idiot. Jon Stewart isn’t funny.
My, what a load of garbage. But my point remains, that reading such things, rather than elate me as they once did, send me into a depression of the mind, because, while Hitchens has a fundamentally scientific view of human progress, as things are constantly getting better and better, my own is sadly more Hellenic. This post today, is worse than that from yesterday, which is miles behind the one before it, and so on. While I will admit to there being a period when the tools of my craft were cruder and my own ideas were less well refined, I can’t help but feel there was a greater imagination at work then. It is as though I’ve lost something in the intervening years, some essential spark that has vanished, never to be found here again.
There are times when I wake up frantic, because my head is throbbing and my mind is sluggish, as though I’ve lost what little acumen I’ve accrued. Even once I reassure myself that no, I can still remember a half dozen things I try to keep in mind, I worry for a few days, sometimes even a week, that a park of my mind has been extinguished. Today, I should point out, is one of those days, and so this post might seem especially sloppy. I apologize to anyone reading this, and can only say that I did at least try to keep it fairly mistake free.
I should however point out that I freak out about a lot of things. I go through disinfecting wipes like they’re Hairbo gummy bears, despair at news reports of gloom and doom (no matter how often they appear), and can stand parties about as much as they can stand me. In other words, my insanities are many, my manias numerous, and my opinions bizarre. Really, what you are doing while reading this is simply stepping directly into the depths of crazed persons mind. See, it’s not nearly as bad as Criminal Minds would have you believe is it?
However, I feel as though this whole post has been a bit of a downer. Well, more of a downer. So, I’ll close with a humorous fact and a quote from Homer Simpson. First off, the fact, which is that ambisinister is a condition where you are clumsy and unskilled with both hands. And the quote is “Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It’s what separates us from the animals. Except the weasel.”
Oh, and some youtube clips of Stephen Fry. By the war, all of these deal with atheism, cause that’s the way Hitchens rolls…God that’s nerdy.
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